… and what about TREINBACHER capacity in Austria? …

Continuing the discussion started by Tim Ainsworth, Great Western Minerals just announced that they were successful in using an electrolytic cell process for producing Neodymium metal. Not being a specialist, it was hard at first to understand the magnitude of this achievement, but then I found this note written by Ed Richardson, the VP of Thomas&Skinner, who confirms that this is a big deal:

http://www.magneticsmagazine.com/main/channels/materials-channels/a-break-in-the-rare-earth-magnet-value-chain-fused-salt-electrolysis/

If only now Great Western could solve efficiently the separation part of their mine-to-metal model (using a tolling facility or not) …. I am very much aware of your current opinion regarding the survival of GWM, although I believe that I didn’t read a detailed explanation.

Regardless, thank you very much for writing all these articles, they are extremely helpful when navigating through the complexities of REE

You may find this an interesting read. Lynas would appear to be looking to emulate the scale of the LAMP in metal production by borrowing from the aluminium industry and at the same time introducing modern environmental controls.
2.1.6 “…..medium term that the development in Tasmania can be expanded incrementally so as to make up to 4000tpy of metal….”
Perhaps innovation by necessity to fill the middle supply chain gap for the Siemens JV, with La metal for the battery market as a bonus.

http://epa.tas.gov.au/documents/lynas%20services%20pty%20ltd%20,%20didymium%20pilot%20plant%20,%20eer.pdf

Tim,

Thank you very much. I did not know this, and I am very impressed by this move. It is a logical move downstream for Lynas, and it is clearly a beta test to try to master a process, which although established in the industry, is new to Lynas. Lynas is a very professional operation, and I think it will do well.

Jack

“Lynas Corporation, Pilot Plant, Bell Bay (Tasmania)

The Proposal

Lynas Corporation has proposed to develop a pilot plant at the Research & Technology Development Centre, Bell Bay, to prove an electrolysis process and produce up to 100 tonnes per year of Didymium and Lanthanum metals for up to a three year period.”

Sorry no link, it’s just an environmental assessment at this stage and no announcement from Lynas but clear indication they are looking to create their own market by moving into the middle supply chain, the real area of competition with China.

Enrique,

The existing Estonian facility was originally built by the USSR in the 50’s as a central processing station, I believe, for recovering plutonium and uranium from ore concentrates and reactor fuel. Later on, I again believe, in the 1960s its operations were expanded to encompass tantalum, niobium, and the rare earths separation and purification. It has never had more than 2-3000 tons per year of rare earth (light rare earth) separation capacity, and although it has produced light rare earth metallic materials, such as didymium metal used to make rare earth permanent magnets I do not believe this capacity has ever been more than 1000 tons per year. The facility at Silimae was operating at a very low inefficient level in rare earth processing, certainly less than design capacity, up until now. It was for sale for many years before Molycorp bought it around two years ago. I doubt that Molycorp brought any new technology to Silimae, since Molycorp was also a start-up in separation and knew practically nothing about rare earth metals preparation other than what it learned from its purchase of the very small capacity Santoku plant in Arizona. (Note: Molycorp may have been billed as a re-start of an old operation, but it had literally only one former employee whose knowledge to draw upon, so it is more accurately described as a start-up, in my opinion.)

I’m certain that the purchase of Neo Materials early last year by Molycorp brought far more processing and metal/alloy making knowledge to the Molycorp fold than the acquisition of SilMet did. I think that it would be interesting to ask Molycorp’s management just what they obtained when they bought SilMet, and whether or not the purchase even made any sense at all before the acquisition of Neo.

I have no clue from where feed stock to SilMet is to come in the future. In the past it was coming from the Lovozero mine in Siberia. If it is true that a new separation, purification, and metal making facility for rare earths is being built in Murmansk by a Russian owned group then I don’t think that SilMet has much of a future as a rare earth processing plant. In fact it may already be obsolete.

The news media doesn’t seem able to or to be interested in asking questions about Molycorp’s operational issues, so SilMet will remain a mystery as gar as rare earth processing goes until Molycorp is much more forthcoming.

I have read that in Estonia is a rare earth processing facility operated by Silmet (Molycorp). Do you know the capability of this plant and what is the source of the raw material to feed it.

Thanks in advance,

Enrique

Mike,

I wrote a description of Lynas Malaysian SX facility in which I compared it with Rhodia’s Larochelle plant. To summarize: The Larochelle SX plant has a capability of separating all of the naturally occurring rare earths plus yttrium and purifying them to 99.99% as their chemical compounds. Its capacity is 9000 metric tons per year. It has been operating for 43 years nonstop. Larochelle is thus the standard against which all other existing or proposed such “total rare earth spectrum” SX plants should be judged.

I am giving a presentation in Guangzhou China on August 10-13. My title is “The Case for a Non Chinese Central Refinery” as a tolling facility. My benchmark for this idea is Rhodia’s Larochelle facility. But at this time Larochelle is company dedicated and not a tolling facility. The chairman and deputy chairman of the Chinese Society for Rare earths (Academic) have both been very supportive of this presentation, so please take their support as food for thought. The rare earth supply/demand issue is much more complicated than it looks.

Thanks for reading and commenting,

Jack